The war on copyright communistsBill Gates wants software patents to protect his profit, not the public

Andrew BrownTuesday January 11, 2005The Guardian

Bill Gates is an intelligent man who has done a great deal of good in the world. So when he gets caught out in a bare-faced lie this should matter to all of us; and last week, when he called the opponents of American intellectual property law a "communist" movement he was encouraging a mistake that could impoverish the entire world.

He said: "Of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."

The argument in principle that Gates makes against "communism" starts in exactly the right place. But his vested interests lead him to drag it in the wrong direction. It is as if the Sheriff of Nottingham were to announce that it's enormously important that your property was protected from criminals - so he'll take everything you have that might be stolen and lock it up for safety in his castle. (...)

Software builds on other people's ideas. Claiming royalties on certain fundamental ideas looks like an easy road to endless riches: BT attempted to patent the clicking on hyperlinks in the world wide web. Microsoft has applied for 1,500 patents, some of them nearly as ridiculous. If these were granted, or enforceable, it would stifle innovation and work against the beneficial effects of copyright. (...)

The whole term and the whole idea is a recent invention and it departs radically from hundreds of years of legal tradition.

You cannot own an idea. Noone can. Ideas happen, they are repeated, they are rediscovered independantly. Besides, they don't exist corporeally and noone can exercise the traditional elements of "ownership" over them (in case you don't know, the essence of ownership is the exercise of exclusive possession and control over a thing.)

We all benefit from the ideas of those who came before us. All human advancement consists of each generation starting with the ideas of those who came before and building on them to leave their ideas to the generation after.

You can own a Copyright, but the copyright does not give you ownership of the idea. What it gives you is an exclusive franchise on the idea, the exclusive right to make copies and sell them for profit. It is a government granted monopoly. Not a property right. There is a difference. For sound policy reasons (encouraging and rewarding invention), our society chose to enact laws which grant a temporary monopoly to inventors and artists, to reward them for their ingenuity. There has never been a "property" right in an idea in western law, it is a temporary monopoly granted by the government, this being an exception to the general rule that monopolies are abhorrent.

Calling it "intellectual property" is a dishonest framing of the issue. And its worked very succesfully.

I had No Idea that practically everthing needed to run a computer is free and legally so somewhere on the internets. My state (which owns the computer I use) pays loadsa money (they are running out of) for shit, when they could get the really good stuff for free

I was thinking about trimming down the distro of Linux I have now, and start a company that sells "Internet Thin Clients" with a read only system, for an extremely low price. The software is Free in more ways than one, Free as in Beer, and Free as in Freedom. I can modify this OS all I want, burn it on CD's and then distribute it with the hardware, and no licensing fees. Just got to make sure all the software on it is free.

... has always had the character of the average circus con man. He built his company on deception, bullying, and other unsavory tactics.

People think he is some kind of tech genius, that is utterly laughable.

Oh well, he's not going to find the EU as easy to steamroll as our justice department was. I mean, when you are caught in lie after lie and faking demos and still pretty much get your way, somethings not right.

Being in IT, he's caused more problems with his unfettered greed. One of his many MO's is to have his wretched software reprogrammed so competitors can't make their programs compatible. (this started in the OS/2 days, after IBM won the right to use Windows code in OS/2 after the divorce as M$ had stabbed their 'partner' in the back... and yet companies still want to team up with M$. DUnno why. Every time M$ teams up with someone, they stab 'em as hard as they can at some point.)

M$ gives nary a fuck about society. Only its own paycheck. And brimstone will do to them for the same reasons brimstone took care of a certain biblical city: Selfishness, inhospitality, and greed. (not homosexuality, which is the popular (mis)belief.)

petulance reminds me of an exchange I once had with a Republican poster on the now defunct Policy.com.

She was determined to nullify the clear implication I had pointed out of Christ's parable concerning Lazarus, the rich man and the street dogs, who, in their hapless stumbling compassion licked Lazarus' sores.

Ah, so that's what those street dogs had been up to I replied! They'd been reading too many books on liberation theology! (I still haven't read any of them, though I imagine I'd be very inspired).

The next evening, instead of admitting that she'd been very foolish, she apologised and said that she'd been very tired! Pass...

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